International hub for pharmaceutical tech

Bayer in Bitterfeld produces around eight billion tablets a year. Aspirin is one of its best known products. Numerous other pills, capsules and infusions are also manufactured in Saxony-Anhalt by companies such as Bayer Bitterfeld, Salutas, IDT Biologika, Wacker, Merz, Mibe, and Oncotec. This clearly demonstrates that Saxony-Anhalt is a leading location for pharmaceuticals and biotech with big-name manufacturers and a diverse and highly innovative research environment.

Central Germany boasts a well-functioning production and supplier infrastructure and a network of specialist and technical expertise that has grown over many years.  Workforce, expertise and service all found here have been showcased at the FlyPharma event in Leipzig and the EXPO REAL in Munich, where the three partners of the “Airea” – Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG (MFAG), Wirtschaftsförderung Sachsen GmbH (WFS), and Investitions- und Marketinggesellschaft Sachsen-Anhalt mbH (IMG) – have jointly solicited investments.

The “Airea” covers the entire pharmaceutical value chain, from research and development to production, and from marketing to logistics and service. The highly efficient, ultra-modern airport at Leipzig/Halle also has CEIV Pharma certification and can handle temperature- and time-critical pharmaceutical shipments such as vaccines around the clock. This places it firmly on the map of pharmaceutical trade routes that meet uniform global standards. The airport offers an international distribution network specifically geared to vaccine and medicine production in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In all, over 70 freight airlines land at the airport and serve a network with more than 270 destinations worldwide.

One of Germany’s top ten technology parks

As well as excellent connections to the trans-European rail and highway network, the region also offers impressive space and investment potential. This is certainly the case at the Weinberg Campus Technology Park in Halle (Saale) – an innovation hub for life sciences, biomedicine, and material sciences. The Park, a designated Center of Excellence, offers the ideal infrastructure for research companies in the fields of life sciences and material sciences. This includes S2 and S3 laboratories, technical rooms, animal husbandry facilities, isotope laboratories, and greenhouses.

Icon Genetics GmbH, part of the Japanese Denka Company, is also writing its success story here. The company is a world leader in the development and use of expression systems for recombinant protein production. Icon Genetics has created its latest-generation production platform, magnICON®, and has a patent portfolio of over 400 patients in the field of plant-based expression systems. The firm recently announced the construction of a 50-million-euro production facility. 

And not that long ago, WACKER began building its mRNA center of expertise at its site in the Weinberg Campus Technology Park. In future, active ingredients based on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), such as mRNA vaccines against Covd-19, will be produced here. The expansion will more than triple production capacity in Halle, and the workforce is set to more than double. WACKER is investing over 100 million euros in this expansion – the largest ever investment by a company on the Weinberg Campus.

You can find more information and articles about the pharmaceutical mecca that is Saxony-Anhalt here.